Damage Control

by Amy J. Fetzer

  DAMAGE CONTROL

  DAMAGE CONTROL

  AMY J. FETZER

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  This novel is dedicated

  with much love to my niece,

  Angela Marie Tusa

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  U.S. Arctic Research Commission

  Above the Arctic Circle

  Dr. Walt Arnold took slow breaths to keep from freezing his lungs. At thirty below, he was accustomed to the staggering temperatures, but it was hard to regulate his breathing when he was lifting sixty pounds of pipe and ice. He wrapped the core sample in plastic, then, with his assistant, levered it onto the transport, its metal shell intact. The temperatures were in their favor to keep the core sample from relaxing, as well as maintaining the chemical isotopes in prime condition.

  His team took care of transporting the sample to storage as he returned to the drilling. He adjusted the next length of pipe, clamped the coupling, then glanced at the generator chugging to drive the pipe farther into the ice. The half dozen random samples would help correlate the data from the deeper drills. He watched the meter feed change in slow increments. Nearly three hundred meters. It was the deepest he’d attempted on this patch, and he was eager for data. His report wasn’t due for a year, but making the funding stretch took hunks of time he needed for the study.

  When the core met the next mark, he twisted, the wind pushing the fur of his parka as he waved a wide arc. His assistants jogged across the ice and he warned them again about exerting themselves unnecessarily. They brought it up, the sample laid out in sections. Overstuffed with down and thermal protection, his colleagues rushed to contain it in the storage trenches dug into the ice to keep the sample from relaxing or their measurements for chemical isotopes would be screwed to hell.

  The drill continued and out of the corner of his eye, Walt watched the progress on the computer screen. The nonfreezing drill fluid flowed smoothly and he could kiss the scientist who’d perfected it. Pipes locked in the ice meant abandoning valuable equipment. The crew transported the next length into storage below one degree to maintain the specimen. The rest gathered around the equipment housed over the site with a windscreen that would protect them, yet not change the temperature of the core samples. Walt ached for hot coffee.

  Suddenly the core shot another twenty-eight feet and he rushed to shut it down. Shit shit shit. Not good, he thought, his gaze jumping between monitors. A pipe had come loose, he thought, yet the readings were fine. There wasn’t a damn thing wrong with the equipment. That meant there was a gap. An air pocket in the glacier. His brows knit, his heartbeat jumping a little. The core depths so far were a sample of the climate eight hundred years earlier, give or take a hundred.

  “All stop, pull up the last sample.”

  It was useless anyway. The inconsistent drill would change the atmospheric readings of gas bubbles if the core relaxed and lost its deep ice compression. Holes under pressure were usually deformed. The technician went back to securing the steel pipes. Walt switched on the geothermal radar, lowering the amplifier, then waited for the recalibration. The picture of the ice throbbed back to the screen, loading slowly. He didn’t see anything in the first half that shouldn’t be there. The feed showed an eerie green of solid glacier ice. Then it darkened, a definite shape molding from the radar pulse. Bedrock already? Or perhaps a climate buoy. Thousands of those were getting trapped, yet never this far below the ice floe.

  A graduate student moved alongside him, peering in. “There’s something in there.”

  Walt didn’t respond, waiting the last few seconds for the pixels to clarify. “Yes, Mister Ticcone. There definitely is.”

  ONE

  Southern Chechnya

  A year later

  The sound was like a cracking knuckle.

  A single pop of a vertebrae, and Sebastian hesitated. Then his gaze fell on the little girl, maybe twelve, lying on the dirt floor, raped to death, and he easily applied quick pressure to her killer’s neck. Three successive pops filled the aging farmhouse before the bastard softened in his grip.

  He let the body slide to the ground. Sebastian remained still, movement and sound suddenly amplified. A fist hitting flesh, then the grunts of a struggle. Footsteps, the rapid pad of escape. The glow of a bonfire through bleary glass. A shadow flashed beyond, and as if slapped, he strode to the mattress, ripped off the faded blanket, then floated it down over the child.

  “Be at peace, ma petite,” he murmured, then turned away. The poor thing had been dead for hours. Sick bastard.

  Armed, he moved through the musty house, ignoring the smoke-stained portrait except to count off the family members he knew were dead. He’d found the parents first when he’d entered the farmhouse through the bedroom window. It didn’t take a genius to know they’d suffered. At the door, he hung back, checked his bearings before he slid along the wall to the right. A uniformed body lay a few yards from him, illuminated by the bonfire that had drawn them here. With the screams. He spotted Max on the other side of the barn near the tree line. He was moving fast, a body left in his wake. Not a shot fired. Excellent. This farmhouse wasn’t their objective; that was the abandoned prison that lay a quarter mile north along the Argun River. They’d just killed the night shift. Someone would be coming for them.

  “Report,” Sebastian whispered through the Personal Role Radio. The icy air frosted his breath.

  “One ghosted,” Max replied as if he were standing right next to him. “You don’t want to know what he was doing. No escapees.”

  “Two more in the woods,” Sam added. “With a moonshine still.”

  The family money machine, he thought. Food was scarce here, but booze was like black market currency.

  “Lots of prints leading north, no sign of unfriendlies,” Riley said and Sebastian spotted him near the barn, feeding something to a rangy dog. “Wish we had sat thermals.”

  A wider spread of thermal imaging needed a satellite link and that could be tracked. They were silent, only PRRs and handheld equipment. Any more and they might as well send up a location flare. “You know that means sponging off Company, right.” No one spoke, painfully aware of what that had cost them before. Cost him, he thought. “Regroup, tree line.”

  They needed to make up the time and Sebastian surveyed the terrain before he sprinted to the fire, then a few yards beyond into the woods. Tucked in the trees, he knelt and turned, aiming the short rifle and covering Sam’s and Riley’s approach. He was the only one wearing a video recorder and switched it back on, then flinched when Max slid up beside him, silent and very deadly.

  “It’s creepy how you do that sometimes,” he said, his breath puffing with frost.

  Max looked almost hurt. “You need a hearing aid, old man.” Then he flashed a grin. “Time to rock?”

  “C’mon, cousin.” Sebastian rolled around and launched into the forest, running fifty yards, then dropped to one knee to cover Max’s approach. Then Sam’s as he shot past him in a blur. Riley took his pos
ition as Sebastian ran the next leg. They covered the quarter mile in under four minutes, aware the opportunity to rescue their target was narrowing by the second. D-1 was shattering several international laws just being anywhere in an occupied country. Diplomatic channels were just a pissing contest between each side and no one admitted to holding Vince Mills. Someone was very good at keeping secrets. Hell, the team had to HALO jump from thirty-five thousand feet to get inside the country and were likely already on someone’s radar. He just hoped it wasn’t the Russians.

  He slowed his approach. The dark outline of the prison was blacker against the night sky. A pale cool mist wove around the treetops, reaching out to the prison walls. The penal complex was massive, the yards overgrown as if the land was trying to smother its ugliness. Recent reports said vehicles had left five hours ago and had not returned. Ten guards patrolled the place; five were growing cold on the ground.

  “Last intel reports the target on the lower floor, northeast corner.” Beside him, Max followed the GPS tracking on the phone used to threaten, to negotiate for the life of Vince Mills, underwater sonar engineer. It was their only link inside enemy lines. Why he was taken was still a mystery, but it didn’t matter. He needed rescuing. If he was still alive. Russians weren’t known for their mercy. But seizing an American businessman on his vacation in front of his young family stirred up tension across the region. It should have brought tons of help, but no government would lend aid to locate the hostage inside Chechnya. It was stepping into a war zone. Moscow claimed no knowledge, and even U.S. intel said information was sketchy and that a rescue was too dicey. That pissed him off and D-1’s Ops commander, Safia Troy, squeezed her old contacts for proof of life. That got them a vague location, enough to triangulate the cell phone used to demand a ransom. Mills had been moved twice already. Oh yeah, the enemy knew they were coming.

  Sebastian pulled the strip of black nylon covering Mills’s picture encased in plastic. He’d memorized every detail, the expanse of his jaw, the nose that had been broken more than once. Yet the image locked in his mind was Mills’s daughter as she pushed a well-loved stuffed rabbit into his hand and begged him to give it to her daddy so he wouldn’t be afraid. It was tucked in his leg pocket. Breaking a promise to a three-year-old was not in the cards, and he patted it for luck, then motioned to keep the chatter down.

  He didn’t have to signal. The team understood the plan: surround, assault, then search and destroy. He liked things simple. Sebastian raced to the southeast corner and kept hidden near a cluster of barren trees, covering Riley as he climbed and secured his sniper position. A moment later, a pinecone hit his shoulder and he spun, searched, then aimed to the treetops. Riley signaled that he didn’t see any guards on the rooftops, and no movement from his vantage point. Sebastian headed right, hidden in the winter-stripped woods, widening his path to the north corner. No sign of movement this close made his Scooby senses jump. Granted, it was below thirty degrees, but the kidnappers hadn’t been slack till now. He tugged the black balaclava up over his mouth and sprinted to the corner. Ducked low, he crawled forward and looked in the window. The room was empty except for a chair. So much for timely intel. Satellite hadn’t given them much beyond some trucks leaving the area several hours ago.

  He inched to the next window, spying inside. Vacant. He proceeded to the next, the glass dirty gray and crossed with wires. He backed away, wedging himself near a bush. “Negative target, east side. Shit. Negative anything.”

  “Same northwest. No patrols either.”

  That made the skin on his neck prickle. “So…they’ve either moved him again or it’s a trap.” They’d organized in Georgia less than eight hours ago. Even Interpol didn’t know they were here yet.

  “Yeah. So. Not the first time. GPS is still active but fading,” Max said. Max and Sam were west of his position.

  Sebastian ordered the assault. Low and tucked, he ran to the side of the structure, foliage catching on his boots. He rushed to the only door on this side, and when it opened, his hackles jumped to a whole new level. Rut-roh. He slipped inside and dropped to one knee. The light tucked beneath the MP5 rifle barrel illuminated the tight corridor; the laser sight pierced the beam. The ceiling had fallen, the debris coated with the rippling sling of mud. He spotted shell casings, an empty boot on its side. He moved forward, turning a corner, and at least intel was right about the rows of cells lining a wide corridor. There was a decayed body in one, still locked in, still chained to the wall. The body was missing a foot, the exposed bone sawed cleanly. I found your boot.

  Mills’s chance of survival was looking slim, and he pushed on, searching the cells till he reached the end of the wide bay. A broad flight of stairs lay in the center, rising to the second level of cells. He caught the flicker of light and aimed.

  “Outlaw, your twenty?”

  “Second deck, north end,” Sam said.

  “Copy that.” Sebastian continued to the northwest corner. The cell door was open, a single chair inside the narrow space, to the right of it a battery, corroded and linked to some nasty-looking devices. What the hell did a sonar designer have that was worth torture? Those things looked like dental tools. He backed out, nearly tripping over a body lying against the left wall behind the open door. He spotted Russian insignia first, then he searched the dead soldier, coming back with a pistol, ammo, and a crushed pack of cigarettes. No ID. While the smokes were wet, the pistol was in perfect condition, oiled and clean. It had been in the holster. He pocketed the weapon, then brushed back the wool skullcap, and a second before he noticed the blood still bright, he saw the two bullet holes in the back of the head. The guy’s face was just gone.

  “Be advised, one guard dead, execution style. He’s fresh. No ID.”

  “Found two, same-same, Russian Army uniform, no ID,” Max said. “East side, no target.”

  “Could intel be that bad?” he said to no one, then found a third body outside a heavy steel door, a key broken off in the lock. He switched night vision to thermal briefly, but nothing registered. He didn’t have time to investigate further. Not till they located their target. Not with executed guards littering the place. He stripped the corpse of gear, noticing several tattoos, yet found nothing else. Not even a match-book. Yet a thin, half-smoked cigar lay near the boot. The skin was cool, but not cold. Very fresh. Within the last three hours.

  He quickly turned away, searching the ground for footprints, and found several. He followed one set, heavier than the others, another beside it, dragged. The prints led him farther into the center of the prison. He passed a dining area, rows of tables with bench seats attached, and for an instant, it looked like a school. The kitchen was exposed, pots stacked on metal shelves, coated with a layer of frosted dirt. The footprints directed him to a staircase in the far southern corner. They curved down to a black hole of nothingness.

  “D-1 regroup, my twenty. There’s a basement.” Of sorts. From his position, he could see the chisel marks where it had been carved out of the rock.

  “Roger that,” came from his teammates. Riley was still parked in a tree.

  Sebastian waited for the team before he moved down the metal staircase, the iron anchors screeching as it swayed. He shone his light below and saw the glassy surface of water. “A cistern?” He descended the steep staircase that forced him to turn sideways.

  “More like a sewer. Christ, that smells,” Sam said behind him.

  Max remained topside, covering them. “GPS says we’re within twenty-five feet. About two minutes ago. Battery’s toast.”

  “Thermal?”

  “Negative. No reading through all that rock.”

  “I’m gonna be really pissed if they tossed the phone down here.” At the bottom steps, Sebastian’s boots filled with icy water and he shivered and cursed, then moved carefully. “Low bulkhead,” he warned, ducking. Water sloshed over his boots as he advanced in an uncomfortable hunch. The floor was fairly even, but his shoulder scraped the tunnel wall as he followed the
water. No current, the surface motionless till he disturbed it. He wedged himself around a curve and the area opened wider. A lot wider. Water seeped down the walls, dripped from ten feet above, one plop at a time.

  Beneath it was their target.

  Vince Mills was strapped to a stool in the center of the pool. His legs were secured and underwater to his ankles, but his chin rested on his chest. Despite the freezing cold, he wasn’t moving. Not promising, Sebastian thought, and leading with the rifle barrel, he inspected his surroundings in a narrowing circle. Mills’s clothing matched his wife’s description, though muddy, his shirt torn at the shoulder. But that’s where it ended. Last seen with a ponytail of dark hair, Mills’s head was shaved clean and sported several cuts. A couple were still glossy with fresh blood. At least he hoped it was fresh. The guy hadn’t moved a fraction, yet Sebastian felt every hard shiver working up his own body. His toes were already numb.

  He motioned to Sam and they covered the circumference, then in his peripheral, he saw Mills’s fingers twitch. “Vince Mills, your wife sent us.”

  A sound came, strangled, desperate. Mills kept his head down.

  “He’s alive.” Always a plus, he thought, exchanging a smile with Sam and moving to face Mills. He knelt, inspecting, then started to reach for his bonds and froze. Wires. Everywhere. “Be advised. We have explosives.”

  “Well, that just stole the joy,” Max said.

  Sebastian shouldered his rifle, then slipped off his pack and, with a penlight, followed the leads. He lifted the baggy shirt a fraction. Now that’s a big party favor. Slim tubes of C-4 were molded to Mills’s rib cage, his skin the only thing separating him from enough explosives to blow the entire prison into kibble. The phone was wired into it. And from the look of it, the fading battery wouldn’t matter. There’s a secondary power source, he thought, and through his night vision goggles, he studied the water, not daring to disturb it till he was certain the guy’s feet weren’t wired as well. He followed the trail of wires that led to Mills’s mouth.